Negotiations
by Cruciferous-Jex
Summary: Hordak goes to Beast Island to recover Entrapta. (Short Entrapdak fluff).


_Some context: Prime has begun his invasion on Etheria. After being horribly rejected by Prime and left for dead once again, Hordak is saved by Scorpia who - unable to stand his pain - tells Hordak that Entrapta is alive on Beast Island. He ofc goes to find her. At this point the two of them are hiding out on Beast Island together, as it is ironically one of the few safe places left on the planet._

Negotiations

They sat huddled together near the entrance of the cave, listening to the dull roar of the nighttime wildlife. Night was was by orders of magnitude louder than day on Beast Island. Night was when the shrieking birds came out, when the carnivores screamed for mates, when the great reptile beasts roared and stomped to protect their eggs. It was an insufferably atonal symphony of horrors only broken, for Hordak anyway, by the sound of Entrapra's voice, and only then because he still could not quite believe that he was hearing it, that it really was her, here, next to him, neither having betrayed him nor having been killed.

The first fear was quickly eclipsed by the second when Scorpia told him the truth of what Catra had done. He supposed he should have killed Scorpia for this betrayal, for having kept it from him as long as she did, but in the chaos of the invasion she'd slipped away. He did not give chase, Scorpia was not his priority. His sole focus became Beast Island and the recovery of Entrapta, so that they might resume their research and find a way - any way - to escape the planet. Prime could not be stopped. Their only option would be to steal a ship and escape as far from the planet as was possible in this pocket universe, and then generate a portal - to anywhere.

But tech was not on his mind as he made his way to Beast Island, nor even escape. What was on his mind - quite primarily and to his equal fascination and dismay - was her hair. As he tossed the bodies of a pirate crew off a Horde armored transport - stolen from him and his to reclaim, after all - somewhere in the back his his mind floated her hair, the soft weight of it on his shoulder, how smooth it had felt when it once or twice touched his face. Her hands, her eyes, her … her *voice.* It was admittedly bizarre, that in the aftermath of his every failed plan, of Prime's invasion of Etheria and complete rejection of him, that the only thing he could think of, that occupied his mind day after day like a vulture pecking and gnawing on a corpse, was the hair and hands and eyes and voice of a woman who was most likely dead.

She wasn't. Of course she wasn't. He chastised himself for ever having underestimated her. She had of course survived on Beast Island, as she was brilliant and adaptable enough to survive anything, and had in fact saved him from certain death not long after his arrival there, swiping him from being ground to death in the gullet of some giant scaled and fanged horror. She tossed him out of harm's way with her hair and put the beast down via handmade crossbows she'd built from the island's steel tensile vines, the arrows tipped with poison extracted from that same vine's flowers. She was dirty, her clothes were ripped, but this was all just one more adventure to her, another opportunity to collect data. Hordak was speechless at seeing her again. She just laughed and asked what had taken him so long.

But now here they were, together again, huddled together in the dark. It was getting cold. A fire was not an option, as it would alert every wild animal in the vicinity to their presence.

"I have an idea," she said, grabbing his arm to get at the one of the armor's control panels. She used a sharpened stick to open it. She took a moment to admire the controls "Looks good. You've maintained this very well, Hordak."

"Of course," he huffed, unconsciously touching the purple carved gem at his neck._ It was the last part of you I had_, he didn't say. _It is my treasure, my totem._

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Making you into a heater," she replied, and shivered. "Just reroute the temperature controls, and - there! That should work."

He gingerly touched the plate on his chest, which gradually rose in temperature. "To what degree?" he asked. "Am I to warm the whole cave?"

"I suppose I could do that but it would probably overheat and there's not a lot here to repair you with. No, this is enough to warm you, and, um … me."

She gave him an odd look, expectant but sheepish.

He raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"I, um …."

"What?"

She bit her lip. Gestured to him. "Can I…?"

He opened his arms to her, and she crawled into his lap.

Everything settled within him at this contact, a calm that was utterly unfamiliar to him, but was so clearly the fulfillment of weeks of despair and fear and longing. Just this, Entrapta's arms around him, her legs around his waist, the happy sigh she gave as her head came to rest against his shoulder, the metal plates of his armor warming them both. Her hair slowly, perhaps unconsciously, wrapped around them, sealing them in an odd but effectively temperate cocoon. Hordak tilted his head, placing his face right at her hairline, and closed his eyes.

Her fingers crept up to the jewel at his neck.

"I missed you," she whispered.

"Likewise," he whispered back.

His hand rose to meet hers. Their fingers intertwined.

"This should not have happened," he said.

"What should not have happened?"

"I never should have allowed Catra to take you from me."

"You can't control everything, Hordak."

He grumbled.

"We're together now, that's all that matters," she said, and wrapped herself even tighter around him. A tendril of her hair snaked forward and tenderly stroked his face. In a swift movement, before he even knew he was doing it, he pressed the tendril to his lips and shut his eyes.

When he opened them again Entrapta looked up at him wide-eyed, fascinated by this new development. A blossom of adoration opened in his chest - god, her eyes, those sweet big eyes looking up at him as though he were the moon, it was unbearable.

He tilted her chin up towards him and kissed her, a brief soft kiss.

Oh," she said, blinking.

"Oh?" he asked, his ears lowering slightly. Had he gone too far?

"I didn't know, " she said too quickly.

"You didn't_ know?_" he repeated.

"I mean I didn't think about it," she replied, also too quickly.

"You didn't think about what?"

"If you - um - if you -" she stammered, flushing. " I mean - you're - your species are clones, you reproduce by cloning, doesn't that make, um … kissing and …and such … redundant?"

Hordak smirked.

"Not that I thought about kissing you," she said, quickly, definitively.

"You clearly did," he said with a soft chuckle. "You clearly put quite a bit of thought into it it."

Her eyes went wide. "I meant - you know what I meant. "

He nodded and gently stroked her face. Tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. She shut her eyes.

No one's ever kissed me before," she whispered.

"Then shall I kiss you again?"

She nodded. This kiss lasted longer, and this time she returned it. Her hands rested at his shoulders. He moved to kiss the side of her mouth, her cheek, her temple, her neck. She sighed, relaxing into him.

"My species," he said between kisses, "are not all clones. The clones are Prime's invention, and he left us…intact, in that way."

"Oh," she breathed, tilting her neck so he could kiss the crook of her shoulder. "Why?"

"For the purposes of conquest," he said. "Sometimes such things are needed in certain kinds of … negotiations. And for the establishment of dynasties. It serves Prime's purposes that his genetics are … available. So to speak."

He kissed her ear and nuzzled up into her hair. Ah, her wonderful, prehensile, talented _hair_. He breathed deeply.

"So we're…negotiating," she said.

"I suppose."

"Establishing dynasties?"

He chuckled softly. "Eventually. Maybe. If that's what you want. We could establish a fine one," he said, not allowing thoughts of _if we survive, if we get off this planet, if we can construct another portal_ to invade this moment.

"We don't need to get too far ahead of ourselves," she replied. "Let's just stick to, um…negotiations, for now."

He smirked. "As you wish, Princess. As you wish." He touched her face, stroked her hair. "Anything you wish, for as long as I'm alive."

She smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him. "Hordak," she whispered. He pressed his face to her hair, then looked out over the horizon, past the ocean, where there lay the dull glow of interplanetary war, going unnoticed by the noisy creatures of Beast Island. The amount of time he was alive might not be much longer, he realized - but it would have to be.

Entrapta touched the crystal at his neck, then his face, then rose slightly and kissed him - this time fully, with a softness and trust that dissolved him, that, if he could, he would write into the very sky.

It would have to be.


End file.
